


Knowing

by glasscannon



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, set after the first movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 18:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscannon/pseuds/glasscannon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some are facts she has known for years, and others are new discoveries.  She savors each, turning them over in her mind carefully, lining them up to measure what she knows of Tony Stark against what everyone else thinks they know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knowing

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2008.

There are parts of him no one sees, aspects of his personality that don’t make the tabloids, that the news anchors don’t mention when discussing the latest footage of Iron Man’s exploits, or the most recent dip in Stark Industries’ stock.

He likes to stay up late watching old movies.  He hates microwave popcorn.  The only dish he can cook is homemade ravioli, which was his mother’s specialty, too.  He has never owned brown socks.  He never goes out in public without the body armor he modified to hide the arc reactor, but doesn’t mind that it glows through every t-shirt he wears at home.  He hasn’t had a date in seven months.

Pepper Potts keeps a running tally of all these things, without really knowing why.  Jarvis could have called up any number of these facts for her at a moment’s notice, but instead she quietly commits them to memory.  Some are facts she has known for years, and others are new discoveries.  She savors each, turning them over in her mind carefully, lining them up to measure what she knows of Tony Stark against what everyone else thinks they know.

And then one day, as she is perched on the edge of the sofa, sorting emails on her laptop into “must respond” and “must not respond” folders, keeping one eye on the CNN coverage of the current stock price and one ear out for the _ding_ of the coffee maker that Jarvis mercifully started for her, she realizes she knows something else about Tony Stark that no one else knows: Tony Stark loves Pepper Potts. 

It’s just there, unspoken, between a terse email from a board member and an overly hopeful email from a junior journalist, between Wolf Blitzer’s neat syllables and the smell of coffee wafting from the kitchen, between the blue horizon of the ocean in front of her and the soft muffled noises drifting up the stairwell from the workshop behind her.  He loves her.  He _loves_ her.

Her fingers don’t still over her keyboard as this fact takes its place alongside all the other things Pepper Potts knows about Tony Stark.

He’s said so a thousand times, without actually saying it.  It was the first thing he said to her when he stepped off the plane home from Afghanistan, and the last thing he said to her as he urged her to hit the override button on the giant arc reactor.  It was there when he asked her to hack into Obadiah’s files, and it was there when he asked her to stick her hands inside his chest and fix the thing keeping him alive.  It’s been there hundreds of times every day for months, and Pepper is only now realizing it.

As she pours herself a cup of coffee, she realizes something else: Pepper Potts loves Tony Stark.  She isn’t sure when this happened, and she doesn’t know if she’s ever said it, verbally or not, but there it is, nestled between his schedule and his scars, living quite primly beside black socks with gold toes, cars – and suits – he drives too quickly, robots with more personality than the last dozen waiters they’ve had, and the way Wolf Blitzer is saying “Mr. Stark” on the TV in the other room, with the _Mr._ held half a second too long, and a slight pause before _Stark_.

She lifts a clean coffee cup off the drying rack and pours a cup for Tony, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, her cheeks just beginning to flush.  She holds the cup carefully with both hands, knowingly leaving her Blackberry, her laptop, her stack of forms to be signed, behind on the couch, as she descends the stairs into the workshop with practiced grace.  Today, she decides, she will start saying it too.  Today, and tomorrow, and all the days after, until Tony Stark is able to add this small thing to the list of things he knows about Pepper Potts.


End file.
